A Trip To Remember
By John Swartz
Months of preparation, hours of band practice and logistical arrangements for a big trip to the big city, New York all hang on the wheels getting you there doing the job. Three Patrick Fogarty Catholic Secondary concert band members recall the trip of a lifetime which got off to a flying stop.
“We just crossed the border and it was snowing and upstate New York is very hilly. I was at the back of the bus and I could start smelling something and I knew, “Oh this isn’t good,”” is Nick Raseta’s memory of how the Patrick Fogarty Catholic Secondary ‘s band trip was going.
Anyone who has travelled with some frequency a great distance by bus for something like a school trip knows breakdowns are part of the deal. They don’t happen all the time, but enough to have some war stories to tell.
“We had to be here at 4:30 (a.m.) to load the bus. This was a very big trip and we wanted to be on time. It’s good we left at 5, it gave us a little head room,” said Raseta, a Grade 12 student and one of the band’s percussionists. They were only about an hour’s driving time into New York State. They didn’t take the New York Thruway, but opted to take a state road out of Buffalo. Anyone who knows those routes knows the roads are like roller coasters. There’s good reason why so many truck runoffs can be spotted along the way.
“We pulled over because a brake drum actually caught on fire. We stopped right in front of the Warsaw Fire Department. They saw all these high school kids coming off the bus and they invited us in right away. It was snowing pretty hard out and it was cold. I think they tweeted out smoothing out about it and the movie theater got back. The Lego movie was just coming out that day and they invited us to come watch the movie. We ordered pizza just to wait until we got a new bus because our bus was toast,” Raseta recalled.
Maria Brown plays trumpet in the band, and she’ll tell you its lead trumpet too. For her the unplanned layover while waiting for another bus had its perks.
“The driver (fire fighter) actually took me and Mr. Hilts and one other student to get pizza in the fire truck, so that was pretty cool too,” said Brown, a Grade 12 student.
For musicians who don’t often travel by bus to gigs, a breakdown can be an interesting topic to talk about, a highlight even, but when the destination is one of the most famous concert halls in the world, it’s an anecdote to speak of, paling in comparison to talking about the point of the trip.
“I couldn’t believe it. When he invited us he was so casual about it. He was just like “Hey do you guys want to come to a competition in New York at Carnegie Hall.” said Morgan Marchildon. She’s a trombone player and in Grade 12.
The ‘he’ she referenced is Brendan Caldwell, an instructor at Cleveland Ohio’s Baldwin Wallace University’s conservatory of music, who was adjudicating the band’s performance at the Musicfest Canada national competition in Toronto last May. He extended the invitation for the PF band to play in the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory Invitational on the very Carnegie Hall stage where the Beatles, Isaac Stern, Oscar Peterson and Arthur Rubinstein played, and greats like Bernstein, Toscanini and Stokowski lead orchestras.
“I’ve been on both New York trips,” said Marchildon. The band previously went to New York in 2017. “That wasn’t to Carnegie Hall. We’d just gone on the trip because we wanted to do our band trip to New York. We saw Carnegie Hall and we touched the stage and everything.”
That didn’t diminish the excitement of this trip.
“It was kind of a shock,” said Brown. “It was unexpected. Also we had planned to go to Spain, so it was a huge change. It was fun though. It made our last year special.”
Raseta almost had to stay behind.
“I was on the fence about coming back in the first place because I had already graduated, I wasn’t quite sure I was going to come back. I was like, that’s not kind of fair. But, I did come back and it worked out in the end,” he said.
This hasn’t been a normal school year for students in the concert band. The work load increased because no one with any kind of situational awareness is going to play at Carnegie Hall unprepared.
“We started in September. Usually for our band season we start a little bit slower. We won’t go as hard with our practices and practice two times a week as late as we do, but this year we started with full-time practicing to get ready,” said Marchildon.
The Moment Arrives
For some musicians playing a famous setting is just another gig, but for most, even famous players, there’s anxiousness; it’s a dream sequence in action, a fog, until it’s time to strike the first note.
“I was actually, I think, the last student to walk out because I got caught up talking to one of the conductors. I walked out and my whole band’s out there on Carnegie stage and we had some parents in the audience and it was just like, ‘great,’ ‘incredible,’ especially after looking forward to it for the whole year. This is the moment. Our jaws just dropped and your eyes are huge and ‘whoa’ it’s just so different playing on that stage.” Said Brown.
Even though the three students had been to Carnegie Hall, as tourists, they felt the weight of their mission this time.
“New York is a special place, there’s something to do on every corner,” said Raseta. “Everywhere you turn there’s a new thing to see. Going back the second time it really solidified how amazing that place is to visit. When we toured Carnegie the first time we didn’t get to go on the stage, but when you went on the stage it got two times bigger.”
“I gave me chills. When I wasn’t focused on the music, when I had breaks in my parts, I’d look at the ceiling and I’d look at the empty seats in the back, it put chills through my spine It’s just unbelievable how incredible and enriched that place is – not only the history, but the actual space itself.”
The band room at school is dead acoustically, it has to be or music teacher James Hilts would go nuts. So there’s how the band sounds in that space. The Opera House, where the band had a fundraising concert last November, is well-known among the musician class for excellent acoustics and on stage music sounds very different. Normally there’s a sound check before show time, but not in New York. Even the practice the day before wasn’t ideal to prepare the band.
“We didn’t get even to run through all our pieces, and not full pieces,” said Raseta. “That was the main concern I had, was going out there and not really having a feel for the space because even with the Opera House or anywhere we play we have a chance to try out the room.”
With that frame of reference, how did these musicians find playing in one of the world’s most famous halls?
“With percussion I had to play louder than I did here in the Opera House. It’s such a big venue. It was probably the loudest I’ve ever had to play and I wasn’t being told to be quiet. It the first time Mr. Hilts actually said, ‘play louder,’ in any festival,” said Raseta.
Markham’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau High School Concert Band and Oakville’s Thomas A. Blakelock High School Concert Band were also invited.
“Both bands were extremely talented people. All three of the bands did a very good job without actually having a practice session in Carnegie Hall, just to go out there and play it all in one time,” said Raseta.
The Patrick Fogarty band got a high rating for their performance.
“It wasn’t against each other. It was against ourselves, so if you perform in the 90th percentile, which we did, you get a gold,” said James Hilts.
How Can You Go To New York And Not See…
There was time for sightseeing. Naturally, one has to ask about their favourite moment while ambling about.
“Should we say? “ said Brown. Both girls giggle. “We may have done a little trip to the Brooklyn Bridge, a little detour.”
“It was fun” said Marchildon.
The students stayed at a Times Square hotel
“He (Hilts) said don’t go north of Times Square,” said Brown.
The Brooklyn Bridge is south of there, quite a bit south.
“Technically we didn’t break the rules,” said Marchildon.
Of course, there’s a lot to see without leaving Times Square.
“You could be in Times Square, you could be there for two weeks and you would still have so much to do. It’s ridiculous,” said Raseta.
“My friend saw Spiderman,” said Raseta, who missed the opportunity. “I tried to see any buskers. It was cold so I knew there wouldn’t be a lot.” He didn’t want to venture into the subway where buskers are found in abundance. “I didn’t want to go down there because my dad who has been to New York before told me some stories.”
The girls did get to a jazz club and saw the Clayton Brothers play.
“They were good. They had vibes playing too, which sometimes isn’t really popular in a jazz band,” said Marchildon. “That was part of the fun too. You walk home from the jazz club, it was fun walking with the group in New York City.”
Memories To Keep
There’s always a favourite moment from such a trip.
“It was Brooklyn Bridge. We saw Grand Central Station,” said Marchildon.
“30 Rock,” added Brown.
“Yeah, we went to 30 Rock. Other than that is was playing on Carnegie Hall stage,” said Marchildon.
“I think, you’re walking to Carnegie, everyone was so hyped and excited. After we had played Morgan and I just didn’t want to get off,” said Brown.
“I can’t really pick a favourite moment. There was lots of highs on the trip. Just the trip on the whole was an absolute blast. I’ll never forget the people I was with, where we visited and what we did. We accomplished a lot just from being a small school from Orillia,” said Raseta.
So, what’s next? Brown is planning to continue her music education at the University of Toronto. Marchildon is going to study science. Raseta has an audition soon for music at York University, but thinks he may study sports and journalism at Ryerson or media production at Lakehead.
“I’ll still drum on the side, depending on where I am. If I could make a career out of that, there’s some chance,” said Raseta.
Who knows, maybe someday they’ll find themselves back at Carnegie Hall.
“You never know,” said Raseta.
“I would love to conduct a band at Carnegie Hall, that’s my on my list,” said Brown.
“I probably won’t continue music,” said Marchildon, “but I’d love to go see them (Brown and Raseta) at a show. Maybe they’ll get me backstage,,”
No matter what happens, they’ll always have one thing they can claim.
“It brought us together, doing something so huge. I think for the rest of our lives we’ll remember, “I performed at Carnegie Hall,”” said Brown.
(Photos: Students by Swartz-SUNonline/Orillia; PF Band at Carnegie Hall – supplied)
